fiction

It’s From Nigeria, And It Could Make Me Rich

Got an email today that was very disturbing, from a Moses Odiaka. I don’t think I know him, in fact I’m sure I don’t know him, because he’s from Nigeria. I don’t know anyone from Nigeria, unless you count Bosh the exchange student that I met about 45 years ago. This Moses Odiaka seems to have done very well for himself, as he explains in the email that he works in the Credit and Accounts Department of Union Bank of Nigeria, PLC, in Lagos. Sounds like a very good job with a reputable firm, but then I don’t know much about Nigerian banking.

Anyway, the email was disturbing to me because, as Moses explains it, there was an engineer by the name of Manfred Becker who died in a plane crash during the time of the late General Sani Abacha. These are all new names to me, but who wants to learn of even a stranger’s death in an email? According to Moses, Mr. Becker had an account with the Union Bank of Nigeria that at the time of his death contained $18.5 million. Now here’s the next disturbing news --- no next of kin has come forward with the password to access the account. Can you believe that? Over $18 million is just sitting there.

So Moses has come up with an idea that is really brilliant when you think about it. Since Manfred Becker was a foreigner to Nigeria, Moses thinks that if another foreigner were to come forward to claim the money, the bank would find that perfectly normal under the circumstances. He has retrieved the password record from the bank’s vault and is currently holding that information in his possession. The reason he emailed me, and you’re not going to believe this part, is that he needs someone, a foreigner, to come forward and claim the money. If a local made a claim for the money, the bank would know something was hinky. In exchange for me stepping forward to claim the money, Moses has assured me that I will get a cut of the $18 million. Now before you get as excited as I did, keep in mind that he is the one who got the password and he is the one who has been monitoring the account. In other words, Moses has done most of the work, so I expect he will want most of the money. To be honest, I don’t have a real problem with that.

Moses is in Europe at the moment, but he gave me his phone number and two private email addresses so that I could get in touch with him. That’s when we will discuss how to split the money up. In the meantime, he needs my telephone number, my bank’s name, and account number, so that he can complete the application for transfer of the funds by wire from Manfred Becker’s account to mine.

As you can imagine then, I have gone from getting the most disturbing news to learning that I could be a millionaire. And the irony is that I don’t even know where Nigeria is on a map, but I’m beginning to think it’s a great country.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.